Man, let me tell you about the rabbit hole I went down today. I was trying to dig up some dirt on the Syracuse football team – you know, just a bit of history for a blog post I’m working on. Boy, did I find more than I bargained for!
I started poking around online, just a simple search, really. First thing I found out was that this team has been around since way back in 1889. They’ve racked up over 740 wins since then, you know. Not too shabby! Then I found out they had a golden year in 1959, apparently snagged some kind of national championship. I mean that’s pretty cool, right?
So, I’m clicking through, reading these old articles, and I find out that this team really started making waves in the early 1900s. The first guys from Syracuse inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951 were Jones and Frank O’Neill. The game was getting big in the northeast, and it sounds like Syracuse was right in the thick of it. They had a rivalry going with Pittsburgh since 1916. Can you believe that? Over a hundred years of going head-to-head!
As I kept digging, I realized that these guys have been ranked all over the place throughout the years. It says here they were in the Top 25 a bunch of times, like 21 times in the national polls, can you believe that? The last time they were ranked in the top 25 was in 2018. And get this – I found a list of their greatest seasons, and that 1959 season is apparently legendary, the “pinnacle” is what they called it.
I also learned that apparently, University of Michigan has the most wins, like 900 wins!
It was like falling down a well of football facts, man. I spent hours reading this stuff. It’s not exactly a straightforward history, there are ups and downs, good seasons and bad, but it’s all part of the story, right?
Anyways, I just wanted to share my little adventure. It’s amazing how much history is packed into one college football team. It’s really wild when you think about it!
